SCHWANE, JOSEPH. - Theologian, b. at Dorsten in Westphalia on 2 Apr. 1824, d. at Münster on 6 June 1891.
Ordained priest in 1849, he became a privatdocent in the Faculty of Theology at Münster in 1853, and there obtained the chair of moral theology and the history of dogma (1859), later (1881) that of dogmatic theology.
Besides notable monographs on particular questions (Controversia de valore Baptismi haereticorum [Münster 1860]; De operibus supererogatorii et consiliis evangelicis [ibid. 1868], etc.) and the systematic work Specielle Moraltheologie (3 vols., Freiburg in Br. 1873 and 1878), he published the well-known and valuable Dogmengeschichte (I and II, Münster 1862-69; III and IV, Freiburg in Br. 1882-90), which outlines, with first-hand erudition, the development of individual dogmatic treatises according to the four principal periods of theological thought: the pre-Nicene age, the golden period of patristics, the scholastic age, and the modern age.